The Lovely Shadow (10 page)

I tossed the hot dogs in with the towels and
set the loaf of bread on top of the water jars that were on top of
the dryer. I got the dryer going, (I had to move a few jars away
from the control dial first), and then grabbed my stool so I could
reach above and behind the dryer.

The dryer, having been placed below ground
level in the basement, vented out the wall behind it a few feet
above the top of the dryer. The vent hose from the dryer came out
of the back of the dryer at nearly floor level, and then traveled
up the wall to a pipe which then ran up the wall a few more feet
before a ninety degree elbow channeled the air outside through the
wall vent.

I climbed up on my stool so I could reach the
vent hose and managed to pull it off from the pipe. I brought the
vent hose down and laid it on top of the dryer and wedged it
between two water jars, to keep it from slipping off and falling
behind the dryer where I’d never be able to reach it again.

I put my loaf of bread in front of the hose
and let the hot air that was blowing through the hose as the dryer
ran thaw it out. With that setup I could monitor the bread to make
sure I removed it from the heat before it had a chance to get dried
out. I was, in fact, a genius; at least in my own mind.

I decided to try the door one more time while
I waited for my food to warm up. I was pretty sure the attempt was
going to be futile, but having nothing but time, I figured I may as
well try.

I got to the top of the stairs and tried the
door, proving my assumptions correct. I stuck my ear to the door
and listened intently, but could hear nothing over the sound of the
appliances thundering below my feet.

Trying not to feel disappointed, I headed
back down to my chair and waited patiently for my hot dogs to
finish cooking in the dryer. I had left them in the unopened
package so they would not leak juice all over the clean towels and
get the inside of the dryer dirty, but as I came back down the
stairs, I could still smell them. The smell was blowing out of the
vent hose that I had set to thawing the bread.

I sat on my chair and waited with my mouth
watering. I wasn’t sure why I was so hungry, I’d already eaten a
ton of cereal and crackers that morning, which was more than I
usually ate. I guessed that the constant fear and problem solving
that I was enduring must be creating an appetite in me.

As I sat there waiting, I started to realize
that my stay in the basement might be a long one. I was already on
my second day without a single noise from upstairs to suggest that
my mother was even in the house. Plus, Joe got pretty angry when I
mentioned our mother, and I don’t think he was angry about me
bringing the subject up. He was angry at her.

I understood being angry with our mother. I
had, in fact, just gotten over being angry with her myself. I hoped
Joe wouldn’t hold on to his anger overlong. I may have only been
seven years old at the time, but I already understood that constant
anger was a wasted emotion that drained the life force from the
holder of it in ways that can never be replenished.

I wondered if Joe would ever return to me. I
conjured up his image in my mind, but it lacked the same
dimensional quality that it had earlier. It was only a memory this
time, a memory without physical presence.

I decided that Joe’s first visit had been a
fluke. Joe had been able to return to me for that brief period
because I had needed him desperately, to help me find what I
needed, and to absolve my fears of the dark. Once I no longer
needed him, he would not (and possibly could not) return to me.

I sighed in my loneliness and decided to
check the bread. It was already mostly thawed out and warm so I
removed it from in front of the hose and set it on the washer. I
opened the dryer and fumbled around in the towels until I found the
hot dogs. They felt warm and soft to the touch, but poking at them
with a little force revealed that the centers were still frozen
solid.

I tossed them back in and got the dryer going
again and went back to my chair. The waiting around was killing me.
I had only been waiting on my hot dogs for less than ten minutes,
but I was already bored to death.

‘My god,’ I thought, ‘what am I gonna do when
I’m all done eating my sandwich? I can’t just sit here in the dark
and do nothing. If I do that I’ll go crazy, and I am NOT going to
be crazy like Momma.’

I sat in the dark for another ten minutes or
so until the washing machine finished its final cycle and went
silent. It was much quieter without the washer and I could hear my
hot dogs thumping around in the dryer.

The sound was very rhythmic and I began
singing quietly to myself in time with the beats. “I don’t want to
be here.” Thunk—kerplunk…thunk—kerplunk… “Where it’s really dark.”
Thunk—kerplunk…thunk—kerplunk… “My Momma’s off her rocker.”
Thunk—kerplunk…thunk—kerplunk… “And meaner than a shark.”

I giggled involuntarily at my own cleverness
and got up to check on my thunking—kerplunking hot dogs. When I
pulled them that second time they felt nice and hot, and when I
poked at them I could not feel any frozen places in them at
all.

I was pretty excited. I never thought that I
could be so excited about some lousy hot dogs, but then again, I
never thought I’d ever be locked in a dark basement nor have Norman
Bates for a mother either.

The sandwich was a bit dry, lacking any type
of condiments and therefore being comprised solely of bread and hot
dogs, but I was still pretty sure it was the best food I’d ever
eaten in my life.

After I ate my sandwich and drank half a jar
of water, I used the washer for bladder relief and went back to
sitting on my chair, listening. I still hadn’t heard any sounds
from upstairs. There were no footsteps, no T.V., no radio, no
voices…nothing.

I began to suspect that my mother had left.
That thought scared me a little bit. She had always been averse to
leaving the house, so I assumed it must have been something pretty
drastic to make her leave. And if she had left, and had been gone
for more than a day, then it must be really, really bad.

I began to wonder why Joe had gotten so angry
when I asked where she was and if she was going to let me out soon.
Did his anger indicate that she was not planning to let me out? Did
it indicate something else?

I had no way of knowing. What I did know was
that sitting around in the dark speculating on things that I could
never know without some form of outside intelligence was a complete
waste of time and was only serving to bring me down.

I had to find something to do. I had to
occupy my time in a better fashion. Having gotten my dungeon home
set up, complete with day and night furniture, with drinking water
and food prep stations, and restroom facilities in place, I had
little to do besides sit and think, and that would never do. Too
much time doing that would drive me crazy; just like my mother, and
I was NOT going to let that happen.

I wasn’t sure what was in all the boxes I’d
sorted through in the dark earlier, but I was pretty certain that I
had come across a box full of books at one point while looking for
tape for my fingers, though it was hard to remember exactly as I’d
been terrified at that point in time.

There wasn’t much light for reading in the
basement, but I thought that maybe if I went to the top of the
stairs, closest to the source of light shining under the door, I
might be able to see well enough to read.

I looked towards the dark side of the
basement and waited for the usual fear to set in but was pleasantly
surprised when it did not happen. Joe had cured me of my fear. He
had showed me that there was nothing down here except me and some
dusty old boxes.

Sure there were a few mice, and probably some
spiders, but there were no monsters, no portals to other worlds, no
flesh eating beetles that were too impatient to wait for me to die
before feasting, and certainly no malevolent Snoopy night
lights.

As I entered the darkness I still tread very
carefully. Just because there was no longer any fear of the
immaterial did not mean I could not trip over the material and
injure myself. My hand was still pretty damn sore, as was most of
my body, and I had no desire to exacerbate my injuries, nor incur
new ones.

I didn’t bother opening all the boxes and
feeling around inside them this time around. I figured I’d be able
to tell which box had the books in it by weight. I remembered the
book box as being pretty heavy.

When I came across a heavy box that was
sitting slightly away from the rest of the pile, I took the time to
reach inside it, and sure enough, it contained books.

I grabbed the box by the open flaps at the
top and dragged it back over to my circle of light to closer
inspect its contents and see if I’d found real treasure.
Unfortunately, just as the light had been too dim down there to see
the contents of the food boxes on the rack, it also proved to be
too dim to see the covers on the books.

I grabbed up five small paperbacks and headed
up to the top of the steps with them, where there was (hopefully)
enough light to read them by. I tried to sit on the very top step
with my back against the door, but this put the light source too
low to see anything by it, so I had to slip my butt down to the
third step. Sitting there was not as comfortable, but it put the
book directly in the beam of light that flooded in from under the
door and provided sufficient light for reading.

I pulled the first book from my stack out and
held it in the light; it was a cheesy romance novel, of which my
mother had been a big fan before she went completely loony. The
second, third, and fourth book were all of the same genre.

I had fully expected the fifth book to fall
into the same category, but was pleasantly surprised when it turned
out to be a book of a different sort. It was a tattered old copy of
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

I had heard of the book before, but I’d never
read it. I was excited to find a book I hadn’t read, since I’d
already read every book we had on the other side of the basement
door—most of them more than once.

I settled into my stair as comfortably as I
could and opened the book. I read it out loud, as was my habit.
Reading aloud helped me to remember what I’d read, seeming to
imprint the words deep into the folds of my brain, where they could
not be easily forgotten. Reading aloud in the basement also helped
me to not feel quite so alone.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a
hobbit,” I read. And from that first sentence I was captivated. I
read through nearly the entire book in one sitting, getting up once
to pee, and finally being forced to stop for the day when my light
had faded so much I could not make out the words any more.

I stood up and tried to massage the kink out
of my back. Stairs, it turned out, were not comfortable places to
sit and read for extended periods. I made my way down the stairs,
yawning deeply as I went.

I had to find something for supper before
turning in for the night. I could not ever remember having skipped
supper in my life, and just because I was locked in the basement
was no reason to start.

Finding food turned out to be a bit difficult
since the light that was dim at the best of times had winked out
completely while I was reading. I made a mental note to myself to
finish my reading earlier from that point on.

I felt around on my chair until I found my
hotdogs and loaf of bread from earlier. I was considering whether
or not to heat the hotdogs with the dryer hose before eating them,
but a full body yawn convinced me that they would taste just fine
cold.

I didn’t even bother with the bread; I just
swallowed down the remaining three hot dogs cold, and decided that
they did, in fact, taste better warm. With that done, I found my
bread loaf and carried it as carefully as I could in the dark and
placed it on my food rack. I didn’t want to trip over it in the
dark.

With dinner out of the way it was time to set
up my bed for the night. Earlier that morning I had relished the
chore of moving the chair and mattress around to make my
accommodations, but I had been bored then, now I was just
tired.

With a little effort, a couple grunts, and a
swear word or two, I got the chair put away and the mattress set
up, and laid my blanket out on it. I decided that even though I was
pretty tired and just wanted to sleep, I wanted to be just a bit
more comfortable than I had been the previous night, so I toddled
over to the linens cupboard and dug around until I found a musty
smelling pillow.

With my pillow and blanket in place on my
mattress, I was finally ready. I stripped out of my jeans and
climbed into bed. It turned out that the pillow was unnecessary; I
think I was asleep before my head even touched it.

I slept soundly through the entire night, and
don’t remember dreaming at all, which was certainly a blessing, and
awoke the following day after sunrise again.

When I opened my eyes I could see dust
particles floating lazily through the beam of light shining in from
above. Spiraling and twisting, the particles appeared to be locked
in some kind of waltz, dancing to music that was only audible on a
different dimensional plane.

I lay there for awhile, watching the
particles, trying to focus my attention on only one particle at a
time; tracing its course with my eyes until it danced out of the
light, then finding another to focus my attention on.

Finally my bladder forced me out of my
comfortable trance, and I had to start my day.

I took care of my morning biology,
remembering to get a rag from the dryer beforehand this time,
started the washer to remove my urine, and got busy clearing out my
night furniture in favor of my day set. I was anxious to get all my
morning chores done so I could finish reading my book, but was not
so anxious that I was willing to skip breakfast.